A new challenge filed in federal court earlier this year by twenty state attorneys general, however, presents a novel and potentially fatal challenge to Barack Obama's ramshackle signature legislation.

Adding delicious irony, Chief Justice Roberts's dubious legal rationalization planted the very seed that may trigger its own time-delayed demise.

Compounding that irony, the tax cut legislation signed into law by President Trump provides the specific mechanism for ObamaCare's possible unraveling.

By way of legal refresher, Obama, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D - California) and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D - Nevada) could have simply opted to pass ObamaCare under the federal government's taxation power. That's because Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution empowers Congress "To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States." Accordingly, they could've simply increased taxes on American citizens, then directed those dollars toward ObamaCare.

Had they chosen that path, ObamaCare wouldn't have even been before the Supreme Court in 2012.

But to do so would've forced them to admit that ObamaCare by definition increased taxes, including on taxpayers below Obama's promised $200,000 threshold, which they deemed politically untenable.

So instead, they rationalized ObamaCare and its individual mandate under the Constitution's Commerce Clause, which empowers the federal government to regulate commerce traversing state lines. The problem is that there was no existing commerce to regulate. Rather, ObamaCare sought to compel involuntary commerce by forcing the purchase of insurance via the individual mandate.

In other words, the federal government was attempting to force unwilling citizens to engage in interstate commerce in order to regulate it.

That obviously would've eliminated any limiting principle to the Commerce Clause and rendered it superfluous. After all, the Founding Fathers couldn't have limited federal authority to matters involving interstate commerce, only to empower Congress to compel commerce in any area of life in order to regulate it.

But that was of little import to Obama, Pelosi and Reid, who simply wanted ObamaCare passed.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts at least rejected that bizarre constitutional rationalization. By affirming a limiting principle to the Commerce Clause, and holding that there must actually be some existing interstate commerce to regulate, the Court deserves credit that it doesn't often receive.

Unfortunately, as noted above, the majority nevertheless sustained ObamaCare by labeling it a "tax" even though Obama himself explicitly denied during interviews and press conferences that it was a tax, and even though the Pelosi-Reid Congress did not designate it as such.

Here was Obama, in an interview with ABC News's George Stephanopoulos on September 20, 2009:

Obama: For us to say that you've got to take responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.

Stephanopoulos: But your critics say it is a tax increase.

Obama: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I'm taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're going to have an individual mandate or not, but...

Stephanopoulos: But you reject that it's a tax increase?

Obama: I absolutely reject that notion.

So the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare on the basis that it constituted a tax.

But then a funny thing happened. Namely, Donald Trump was elected President, and Congress passed comprehensive tax reform, which President Trump quickly signed into law.

And among that legislation's provisions? The elimination of ObamaCare's individual mandate tax penalty.

Consequently, the flimsy "tax" reed sustaining ObamaCare according to the Supreme Court in 2012 no longer exists.

On that basis, twenty states filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year in the Northern District of Texas on the basis that no Congressional taxing power underlies ObamaCare, rendering it unlawful. Those states include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton summarized the logic cogently:

Texans have known all along that ObamaCare is unlawful, and a divided Supreme Court's approval rested solely on the flimsy support of Congress's authority to tax. Congress has now kicked that flimsy support from beneath the law. The U.S. Supreme Court already admitted that an individual mandate without a tax penalty is unconstitutional. With no remaining legitimate basis for the law, it is time that Americans are finally free from the stranglehold of ObamaCare once and for all.

The tax cuts signed by President Trump have already accelerated economic growth and American incomes. Should it additionally provide the basis for finally overturning ObamaCare, its place in the pantheon of great legislation in U.S. history will be secure.

"After nearly three years and millions of tax dollars, the Trump-Russia collusion probe is about to be resolved. Emerging in its place is newly unearthed evidence suggesting another foreign effort to influence the 2016 election -- this time, in favor of the Democrats.Ukraine's top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country…[more]

—John Solomon, The Hill

— John Solomon, The Hill

Liberty Poll

Given the socialistic policy proposals enunciated by most of the Democrats who are running for president in 2020, do you think it is almost guaranteed that Joe Biden will become the nominee, if he decides to run?